


Part of the Legend

by millernumber1



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 14:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10901139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millernumber1/pseuds/millernumber1
Summary: What if, after War Games, Bruce had turned around and seen Stephanie Brown just before she left for Africa?





	Part of the Legend

1.

A flicker of purple. That’s all Bruce saw as he drove away from Crystal Brown. Drove away having ripped everything good away from a woman who’d fought to make her life and her daughter’s better.

But there was a flicker, behind a tree. Of the purple (“eggplant” he heard the cheerful voice insist - the voice that had wanted to drive the car) that usually mean a quip and a trip were just about to happen.

Bruce saw her die. He knows he did. But he parks the car a few blocks from the cemetary and walks back through the grove.

And there she is. In a purple dress. Weak, arm in a sling, bandaged all over, but standing - standing.

The cheer is gone. He sees the slump of her shoulders, a slump he put there by firing her, by not being there for her, by failing her, just as…

No. Bruce refuses to fail again.

2.

The wind is cold. Her skirt doesn’t cover all of her legs, and she feels the skin around her bandages prickle. Part of the legend. She reads the gravestone. Her own gravestone. A red-breasted bird pecks at a worm nearby, mocking her.

A snapping twig. That’s all she hears for several seconds, then a hand - warm, large, firm, gentle - grasps her shoulder. She turns, and her heart races.

“Leslie said…” Bruce begins, but she cuts him off.

“Leslie just wants me to be safe. Please don’t blame her! She’s going to take me away where I can...be safe.” The words tumble over her tongue in her panic - she can just see Bruce visiting Leslie in the cowl, declaring her a murderer and banishing her from Gotham forever. Stephanie has ruined enough lives, she can’t be responsible for another one because Leslie had only wanted to be kind to her.

“I don’t blame her. How could I? After…” he falters, the words not sounding right from long unuse.

“I’m sorry. I believed I was giving you a fair chance, but when Tim came back during the war, I realized I never had.”

Steph wants, so much, to slap him. She sees the bruises from his fight with Black Mask (she shudders, the holes in her shoulder, sides, legs aching), and desperately wishes she had the balance and strength to hit him, right on the bruises. It’s his fault Leslie making her a smoothie caused screams and blackouts. His fault she didn’t kill the man who had just taken sick joy in taking her apart. His fault…

“It will be some time before you could, but would you like to come back?” She stands very still for a minute, trying to convince herself that she’d heard correctly.

“Tim has decided to help his father and stepmother after he prevented Captain Boomerang’s attack, and you deserve...you deserve my best. Always have.” His voice, devoid of the whiskey-and-razor-blades, stripped of all disapproval, contains resignation, and a faint note of hope.

“Come back? As Robin?” She can’t keep her voice from breaking.

“Yes. No provisions, no tests. Training - as hard as you can take, and harder - but the cape is yours, as long as you want it.”

For the first time since the Scarab had held Batman’s life in her hands and Stephanie had failed so badly, a tiny sliver of warmth penetrates her heart. Maybe there’s hope for her yet.

3.

Six Months Later  
She’d wanted to start three months ago. “Nightwing’s already working again,” she complained.

Before, she might have seen only dismissal in those blue eyes as Bruce said, “No. Not yet.” But now she sees only care. She wonders if it’s him who’s changed, or her. He’s had her strengthening her limbs every day, gently, with his super high tech machines. None of Oracle’s robot-arm-weighted push ups - simple repetitions, swimming, tai chi. And always together. She knows he does his own training, brutal, violent training, in addition to his nightly patrols, but every day, for at least two hours, they both work. The past two months, after her sling came off, he’s been increasing the load - never too heavy, but never treating her as if she were breakable.

She doesn’t know which would hurt more - training too fast, or training too slowly. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to deal with either.

The time she’s spent outside of training has gone towards sharpening her mind. The fingerprinting, crime scene investigation, computer skills, deductive reasoning, puzzle solving - she’s sure she could almost best Tim at some of those now. Her maybe-boyfriend was off with Ted Kord now, working hard with the new Blue Beetle, Jaime, to make a global technological crime-fighting network.

The next day, he tells her, “Tonight, Robin.”

4.

“Good work, Robin.” Batman’s gotten a lot better at smiling in the past three months. She likes to think it’s her work - not just the quips, but also making sure he eats with her, giving him a squeeze now and again. Her mom tells her positive physical contact is necessary to emotional well being. She still cherishes the memory of the hug she gave Batman when he revived from the Lazarus pit - but that adventure involved time travel, and some very strange events (plus ninjas! Awesome!), so she doesn’t think she’ll get to do that anytime soon. But the shoulder, the hand, even a foot when she grabs it every now and again to stop falling from a building.

This time, they’ve finally managed to track down Scarab, the assassin who murdered all those boys when she was hired by Johnny Warlock to kill Tim. Knowing her capabilities this time, she and Bruce made a careful plan when they heard Black Mask was taking out a hit on the Joker. Even though stopping one psychopath from eliminating another is something that she might not normally bother with, she remembers her lessons from fighting Zsasz - and longer ago, during the great snowstorm of the Final Night. Life is precious, and we cannot take it ourselves. The arrogance that separates crime lords like Black Mask and Penguin, thinking they bear society’s approval to remove threats and punish wrongdoing - it’s not as simple as “We can’t do it or we become like them” - but perhaps it is. Gotham’s broken, but unless we want another version of No Man’s Land, with Batman ruling his own territory until he, too, is killed, we have to try to shore up the structures of society, and not usurp them.

As they take the de-armored and bound Scarab to the roof of the GCPD, she see’s the wary glint in Commissioner Gordon’s eyes (or was that just his ridiculously thick glasses?), and knows that Batman’s way is the only way to keep the forces of good from toppling into that hell again. She’s done more patrols with Huntress since she donned the domino mask and skirt again, and though she admires Helena, she sees how isolated she was before she decided to work with the Birds of Prey. Thankfully, Steph has always had Tim, and now Bruce, to keep her connected, give her perspective.

5\. 

“Batgirl!” Steph calls, seeing Cass about to go down beneath the combined attacks of Deathstroke and David Cain. She throws a batarang, pinning Cain’s shirt to the wall for just a second - and it’s enough. Cass manages to disable Cain, and Steph leaps atop Deathstroke while Cass manages to grapple him.

“Well..done…” Cass says, and Steph swells with pride. She knows she’ll never be able to match her best friend’s body reading, but a year of work with Batgirl and Black Canary while Batman has been gone meditating in the desert or something has made it so Cass no longer feels the need to either lose Steph while on patrol to handle the really dangerous alleys, or knock her out (though Bruce did show her how to notice the beginnings of Cass’s nerve strike and move out of range before he left). She’s come a long way since Cass hired her former trainees from her father’s program to throw dynamite and bullets at her to sharpen her sense of self preservation and skill.

Later, looking at the sunrise atop the Gotham roofs, Steph thinks it couldn’t get any better than this: Batgirl and Robin, saving the day.

Well, maybe it could. One day. Until then, though, she stands up and asks Cass, “Wanna get some waffles?”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points if you catch all the random stories I referenced for no good reason other than loving them. Also, there's a ton of AU stuff where I erase all the bad things that happen to Steph and co. after War Games which you may or may not notice.


End file.
